


My Body Is A Cage (My Mind Holds The Key)

by yurisaurus



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Equal measures sadstuck and laughs, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Therapy, Unrequited Genji/everyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8388373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yurisaurus/pseuds/yurisaurus
Summary: Building Genji a new body was the easy part, compared to the long road of learning to use it. A detailed breakdown of the time between waking up as a machine and becoming a killing machine. (Again, but more literally this time.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be editing and reposting this story from the kink meme, unfinished so far, but only a couple of chapters away from the end. By the time I'm done posting all the chapters that are already written, I might have already finished the whole thing.
> 
> Meanwhile, you can read the unedited original over here, if you want: http://overwatch-kink.dreamwidth.org/679.html?thread=420007#cmt420007

Once, when he was barely a teenager, Genji had woken up from a dream only to find that his body had decided to sleep in a little longer. Later, the internet would explain that this was called sleep paralysis, and normal and safe and nothing to be worried about. But as he laid in his bed, trying to call for help but unable to move his mouth, all he could do was wait for it to pass.

 

Waking up in his hospital room, many years later, the vague memory of that night kept him calm. He tried to move his hand once, to no avail. Okay. He would try again later. He spent several minutes trying to open his eyes; he could move his eyelids just fine, but the room was too bright, and kept being too bright no matter how long he looked at it.

 

Blurry figures that were probably people came into the room, reminding him that noise existed. There were footsteps and hushed chatter, and the sound of curtains being drawn. The room dimmed, and he opened his eyes further.

 

Only one of the figures was left, standing by his bed. His eyes focused on the wall behind it, and then on the IV in front of it, and finally on the woman’s face. She was blonde and blue eyed and smiling, and spoke to him in English. “Good morning, Mr. Shimada. I am Dr. Ziegler, head surgeon of Overwatch. Can you hear me?”

 

“Yes” replied an unfamiliar voice from his throat. He wasn’t sure how he could speak at all. Had his lips moved? He tried lowering his head, slowly – 

 

“Good. Tell me, do you remember what happened?” she said, as he looked down at his shiny new arms.

 

“I. Yes,” the voice said. Hanzo’s sword slicing through his left arm. A pile of old crates falling down on his right, making him drop his sword and trapping him in place. “My brother and I fought.” He tried again to move his hands. His fingers twitched.

 

Dr. Ziegler sighed and sat down. “Yes. He tried to kill you.” This time he managed to lift his hand an inch, but it felt heavy as – well, it  _ probably _ wasn’t lead. “Overwatch was forewarned that this might happen, but we were too late to intervene. As it is, we barely managed to get you out of the fire in time.”

 

Genji blinked and looked at her again. He didn’t have a sinking feeling in his stomach, but he suddenly wished he did. “You were badly hurt. We saved what we could, but – it wasn’t much.” Shouldn’t he be breathing heavily right now? Shouldn’t his pulse be racing? “Most of your body had to be replaced by prosthetics. You’re safe now, and stable, and we will take care of you for as long as you need. Your family doesn’t know you’re alive, and now that you’re awake, we can transfer you to one of our bases outside Japan whenever you want. You are under our protection.  Whatever questions you have—“

 

“How much?” He wished they were having this conversation in Japanese. His high school classes didn’t cover much medical vocabulary in between past perfect and compound verbs. “How much is left?”

 

Her lips tightened before she replied. “Most of your head and your face. The right side of your lower jaw. Your spine, above T10.“ She thumbed the papers on her lap, but didn’t glance down. “…your right shoulder blade.”

  
Genji looked again at the IV next to him. It went into his arm, next to a plastic cable coming out of it. He followed the cable with his eyes to find that it plugged directly into the wall.


	2. Chapter 2

The Zürich Overwatch base was the largest of the ones he’d seen. Not that he had seen much of the others; he’d been in Guangzhou and Cairo for one day each, and he’d only spent longer in Gibraltar because an infection kept him feverish for a week, so he didn’t exactly get a guided tour of the place. Zürich was to be his home for the duration of his recovery, though, so on the third day he’d been driven around on a wheelchair to see the rest of the medical wing. It was extensive; most of it was dedicated to research, but it had everything a functional hospital might need. The physical therapy area even had a pool, which he eyed hopefully without daring to ask just how waterproof his new body was. He’d already been disappointed earlier by the cafeteria when he remembered he couldn’t eat. He’d heard of phantom limbs; phantom hunger was a newer concept, since not many people survived losing their entire digestive system.

 

He hadn’t been out of his bed after that. Bits and pieces kept being added and removed, testing and improving, and they’d even promised they’d get him a tongue within the month. (That had been an awkward conversation. “But you can’t eat and you don’t need it to speak, why...?” Dr. Ziegler had argued, before blushing and jotting down notes quickly. He really just wanted to hide the speaker on the bottom of his mouth. He wasn’t looking forward to having to ask for his dick back.)

 

Today they were testing the new lining on his arms. It was sensitive to pressure and heat, meant to give him back feeling on his skin, and after it was calibrated they’d apply it to other parts of his body. (Seriously, someone please think about the dick before he has to bring it up himself.)

 

Dr. Ziegler poked his palm with a short, round fingernail. Genji winced. “Did that hurt? Please, rate your pain on a scale of one to ten” she asked, checking the screen that showed his brain activity. “Do remember to be truthful ‐ we don’t want to accidentally calibrate this to the “chronic pain” setting because you put on a brave face, after all!” Genji hesitated. It was hard to gauge his pain accurately when his idea of ten had just been raised from “that one time I broke my leg because I bet my friends I could jump off the roof” to “nearly dying in a burning warehouse with three limbs missing and severe organ damage”.

 

“...three? Four” he said, and Dr. Ziegler checked the screen again. She nodded to Dr. Lindholm, the engineer, who looked at a chart and changed some values in his own screen. She poked him again. “One” he said at once, and she moved on to a point a few inches above it. “What about now?”

 

Once she was done testing all the way up his arm, she moved on to the joints. She flexed each of his phalanges, one by one, to check if the wrinkling or stretching of the lining caused him pain. She touched the tip of his thumb to his little finger and pressed them together. Rotated his wrist. Tested his elbow.

 

It was nice to confirm that Dr. Ziegler’s hands felt as soft as they looked. She was really young for such an accomplished doctor. As she walked to the other side of his bed to repeat the entire procedure on his left arm, Genji remembered he’d only fucked a real blonde once. Dr. Ziegler was much classier than that girl, though ‐ probably because she was European. He wondered if there were any rules against the whole doctor‐patient deal, and how hard it would be to convince her to ignore them.

 

Being able to feel warmth again was a relief. He could see her veins, criss‐crossed under the fine skin on her wrist, as she poked her way up his arm. He hoped they didn’t take very long making him that tongue. Whenever they tested the heat sensors they’d have to bring in another doctor, hah, because she’d throw off all the readings‐‐

 

The vents they’d installed in his shoulders two days before went off, releasing a cloud of steam with a hiss. Dr. Lindholm tried not to laugh at his mortified face, as Dr. Ziegler looked around the room in surprise. “Oh ‐ is it too hot in here for you? I can ask someone to turn down the temperature, though we should check whether your other ventilation systems are working correctly if you need to use the steam vents with no physical exertion ‐‐ “

 

“Doctor, please” Genji hoped he’d lost the ability to blush. “I’m fine.”

 

He stared straight at the ceiling as she finished the examination. Once it was done, doctor and engineer packed up their equipment and got ready to leave. Dr. Ziegler lingered a bit longer.

 

“Dr. Herrera will be coming over this afternoon to go over your physical therapy plan, and I’ll be back at six p.m. for the heat tests on the lining.” Oh, great. “And we can talk about reconstructing your penis.”

 

A cackle came from the hallway. Dr. Ziegler turned around, red and furious. “Oh, Törbjorn, really! That is very unprofessional!” Genji wanted to die more than usual. “You always had a great sense of comedic timing, Angela” he replied, head popping back into the room. “I’ll see about getting you a manual override for those vents, boy.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dr. Herrera wasn’t anywhere near as hot as Dr. Ziegler, but that was probably for the best.

 

“When people spend a long time without using a limb, their muscles and joints atrophy; they lose muscle mass and mobility. We don’t need to worry about that with you, though!” Why were all the doctors around here this cheerful? He wasn’t sure what ‘atrophy’ meant, but it almost certainly wasn’t meant to be said in the same tone of voice one would use for talking about the nice weather forecast for this weekend. “Your synthetic muscles don’t lose strength with lack of use, and any joint issues are for the engineers to solve with some oil. With me, you’ll be focusing on balance, reflexes, and fine motor skills. Since you already have all the strength you need to hold up your own weight, we’ll be skipping the pool.” Life was cruel to Genji Shimada. “You’ll have twenty sessions in the gym with the therapy team, to start with, and we’ll schedule more as needed. I’ll meet you three times a week for the fine motor skills exercises. If everything goes well, we could have you walking around the base in two months, maybe less. How does that sound?”

 

Genji kept playing with the edge of his bedsheet. There was a loose thread he’d been trying to pick at for hours, but he couldn’t get his thumb and forefinger to press together the right way. “Okay.”

 

Dr. Herrera hummed and wrote furiously. “Any questions you have, you can ask me now, or tomorrow on our first session. Here,” she put a timetable filled with unreadable scribbles on his bedside table, “is your schedule for the next month.”

 

Homework. Genji’s favorite thing in the world.

 

When Dr. Herrera left, Genji thought he was in for a few more hours of boredom until Dr. Ziegler came in to embarrass him further. That’s when a strange man came into his room, slipping in past the door and closing it quiet as a cat, because apparently the universe had decided that his punishment for refusing to join the family business was to have a parade of hot blondes right in his face when he couldn’t do anything about it.

 

Well, besides the extensive physical and psychological trauma, anyway.

 

Oh, right, his family had tried to kill him. Under the circumstances, someone slipping into his hospital room unannounced should’ve been cause for concern, but this particular blonde was familiar to him. The man smiled at him apologetically. “Genji” he said. “Forgive me for intruding. Angela didn’t want us to meet so soon, but just this once, I’ll have to ignore medical advice. I’m -- “

 

“Strike-Commander Morrison,” Genji interrupted, “leader of Overwatch.” Morrison beamed.

 

“You’ve seen the posters, then.” He was in his mid-forties, maybe, and some white was starting to show at his temples, but had the same impressive profile from the pictures. There was a lot of...jaw going on there. And cheekbones. And again with the eyes; Genji was pretty sure he’d seen more blue eyes in his short time in the hospital than he had in the rest of his life. It was a bit alarming, almost, but he wasn’t complaining.

 

Morrison sat down, his face more somber. “Son, I think it’s time we talked about why we brought you in.” Genji’s heart didn’t skip a beat because he didn’t fucking have one. He noticed this every time someone was about to tell him something shocking and it was already getting old. “As you know, your family runs the largest criminal organization in Japan today. One of the largest in the world, really, with ties to weapon and drug trade over much of East and Southeast Asia.”

 

“I am aware, yes” replied Genji, vaguely gesturing towards the large amount of plastic and metal lying on his bed, trying to be his body.

 

“Now, before we go any further into this, I want to make it very clear that you have no obligation towards us.” This was probably a conversation they should be having with a translator present, Genji thought bitterly. For a moment he wished he’d been more applied in high school instead of dicking around with swords and underage drinking all the time. Then he remembered that school was boring and at least he’d made good use of the years he’d had with a fleshy body. “If you want, you can stay with us until you get better, not get involved in any of Overwatch’s fights, and leave this base as soon as you can stand without owing us a single Euro for the treatment.” Morrison hesitated. “Technically, you could leave now, if you wanted. But that would be pretty difficult for you, what with all the walking.”

 

“But you want me to tell you about my family.”

 

“That’s part of it, yes.” Morrison leaned further forward in his chair. “Whatever you know of your family’s business would be invaluable to us, and the sooner the better. That kind of info is very time sensitive. Though given that they think you’re dead ratherd than snitching, they were probably in no hurry to change passcodes and safe houses. You’d help us take down a criminal empire that has been a thorn in our side for years, you’d have protection for as long as you need, and you’ll probably sleep a whole lot easier knowing the people who tried to have you killed are behind bars.”

 

Genji doubted it. He’d seen his father and uncles come and go from courthouses all the time as a kid. Uncle Shiro had liked to joke that the reason he insisted on wearing kosode in this day and age was so he could just drop a sleeve to show his tattoo and save himself the trouble of killing the poor bastard who’d tried to arrest him. “What’s the other part?”

 

“It might seem hard to believe right now, but that body you got there is the finest piece of military-grade prosthetics in the world.” Genji looked down at the loose thread in his bedsheet. “I hear you’re quite the fighter. It’ll take a while, but you can be as good as you were again. Better, even - you’d be surprised what they can put into a prosthetic these days.” He remembered Dr. Lindholm’s arm and...didn’t shudder. “You don’t have to decide now. You sleep on it, and you get better, and then you tell me. But remember -- you can help us fight the bastards who did this to you. You can be part of the Overwatch family, as soon as you -- “

 

“I will kill my brother” Genji blurted out. “No one else. You have to promise.”

 

Morrison leaned back in his chair again, rubbing his neck. He looked at the wall for a while, frowning, and finally sighed. “I can’t officially promise that. On account that it’s generally called murder if you don’t have a trial first.” His eyes were never this piercing in pictures. “But I sure as hell ain’t gonna stand in your way, kid.”

 

Genji had never been this eager to do his homework in his life.


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m telling you, the ankles aren’t the problem. The balance algorithms from regular leg prosthetics should work fine. It’s the core muscles - they’re not compensating correctly, there’s something wrong with our code there. If we didn’t have to write it from scratch…”

 

“No, look at his knees when he falls - they’re correcting a second too late, just like the ankles. Can we double check the neural connection there? If it’s too slow -- “

 

“The hardware is fine, Paul. We already checked all the connections. Honestly, you’re all worrying too much, I think he should just keep trying. It always takes time for the brain to adapt to the new input from a prosthetic, it makes sense that it’d be harder with a prosthetic this size.”

 

“Guys, we have NO IDEA what we’re doing with the torso, seriously, no one’s done this kind of work before - well, that one guy in Canada, but the paper’s behind a paywall.”

 

“Holy shit, dude, you do remember our budget, right? We can get the paper if you want, but I’m telling you we don’t need it. Our code is fine.”

 

“Can we run some more joint tests? Maybe they’re not lubricated enough?”

 

“Look, all omnics have this kind of balance algorithm, I’m sure we can adapt something from them, there’s gotta be an open source basic gait code on GitHub -- “

 

“I’M NOT COPYPASTING THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT OF MY CAREER FROM GITHUB, MANUEL.”

 

The thing about Overwatch was that it had the magical combination of a lot of funding dedicated to R&D and a steady supply of fit young people getting blown to bits. This had made it the dream job of prosthetic specialists from around the world, and the headquarters in Zürich, home to its main medical research center, had the best of the best. The best of the best liked to bicker like children, apparently.

 

Genji had been the belle of the ball from the moment he’d been wheeled into the gym, and yet all the improvement he’d made in the three weeks since was that he could push his own wheelchair, now. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true; he could sit up, he could stand up, he could grip things, but he was unable to stand on one foot long enough to take a step. Not from lack of strength, or wobbly knees; he just dropped to one side like a cut tree. His hips and shoulders weren’t compensating correctly, they said. The recovery process for prosthetic limbs was common enough to be standard by now; a prosthetic torso was entirely new territory.

 

Right now, Genji was standing on top of a short plank with a narrow half cylinder across the bottom. With one foot on each end of the plank, he was supposed to balance himself on the cylinder; instead, he was plopping from one side to the other, his hands hovering over the ballet barre in case he needed to catch himself before falling. Once he managed to master the plank, he would have to do the exact same thing on top of a half sphere. Dr. Ayim - he didn’t know if the PhD was in Engineering or Medicine; probably both - was on the other side of the room, showing a girl sitting on the floor how to do the ankle exercises on the wall bars that he’d done on his first week here. She’d be coming over in a few more minutes to check his progress, sigh, and get him another exercise to do - probably the one where he had to go up and down a single step for ten minutes. He really wished he was better enough to get to the kind of exercise where he could punch things.

 

You didn’t have to do those in front of a mirror, at least. What was left of his face was badly scarred, and all his hair was gone. Most of his scalp, too, replaced by synthetic skin that was two shades too pale to look like his own. His therapist had suggested a wig, but green hair felt significantly less punk when you had to order it from a cosplay store. He did do some shopping online for clothes, though; he got some neon green and orange shirts, because all the workout clothes they’d given him were in gray and blue, barely any less depressing than the hospital gowns he’d had to wear for a while.

 

“Hey there, partner.” Someone had snuck up on him while he was busy pitying himself, and was leaning back on the barre next to him. He looked up - the man was at least a head taller than him - to find that he was wearing a cowboy hat. Why. Why was he wearing a cowboy hat indoors. Why was he wearing a cowboy hat at all. “So I gather you’re the new recruit? I’d heard we were getting some cyborg ninja kinda guy on the team, and you look the most cyborg outta everyone here.” He extended his non-robotic hand for Genji to shake. “Agent Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Special Ops. Everyone just calls me McCree.”

 

Genji held on to the barre with one hand and shook with the other, as best he could. This guy was wearing a belt with a huge buckle saying ‘BAMF’ on top of sweatpants. They didn’t even have belt hooks. “Shimada Genji,” he said, “of the Shimada ninja clan.” The handshake nearly made him fall off the plank. He didn’t feel like much of a ninja right now.

 

“Well, welcome to the team, Shimada.” McCree started stretching the joints on his prosthetic with his other hand. It looked brand new. “I gotta say, you must’ve set some kinda record; most Overwatch agents go on at least one mission before they start having parts replaced. I went a whole five years before getting this hand blown off two weeks ago.” He seemed pleased with himself. Judging from the amount of people with missing limbs he’d seen around the base, five years was probably a pretty good number. “I’m asking them to put a lighter in it! To light my cigars with. And a skull engraved all over the forearm. It’s just like a tattoo, except it doesn’t hurt.” His smile faded. “Wait, that makes it sound less badass.”

 

“You’re going to put a lighter in your hand?” Genji asked, alarmed. _“Why.”_

 

“Oh, custom limbs are all the rage in Overwatch, what with half the crew missin' something or other. You got a lot to work with, so you could probably ask for some crazy stuff.” McCree looked him up and down, considering. “You should get a six pack.”

 

“What.” Genji wasn’t sure he wanted to take fashion advice from this man.

 

“You know, sculpt some abs in your outer armor. They’ll probably want to add a bunch of plate to you soon, so maybe you could get some lights on it. Make ‘em your favorite color. And get some cool Chinese letters there somewhere. All across your chest, like this, except it’s classy because you know what it says, so you know you’re not getting ‘spicy rice chicken’ when you asked for ‘patience’.” McCree stared into the distance, frowning. “Had that happen to a friend in my old gang. She beat up the tattoo artist so bad, he decided to go back to law school.”

 

Genji was quiet for a while. “I don’t think good ninjas glow in the dark.”

 

“That’s fine, they make them so you can turn ‘em off whenever. One of the guys in Blackwatch--”

 

Dr. Ayim came to his rescue before McCree could keep speaking. “Genji, it’s time for your next exercise, and then I think the engineers want to talk to you. I see you’re finally making some friends!” No he wasn’t. “You’ll be seeing each other a lot, if you have therapy at the same time.” Noooo. “Jesse, I’ll be with you in a minute. Genji, here, let’s get you back on your chair to go to the step.”

 

McCree winked, and for the first time Genji managed to stop looking at the hat long enough to notice that he actually had a pretty face. He immediately went back to looking at the hat. It was very distracting. “See you around, Shimada. This therapy crap is always more fun with a friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 22 year old McCree is even more fun to write than current McCree
> 
> Wrote a lot of this based on my own experience with physical therapy! This chapter was basically the reason I took the prompt in the first place.


	5. Chapter 5

“Okay, put your chin here. Rest your forehead against the bar. Comfortable? Hold this,” the ophthalmologist handed Genji a small device, “and press the button every time you see a light blink. Keep your sight fixed on the dot in the center, yes? This should take a few minutes.”

 

Genji had taken to wearing a large black scarf on his head, tied back, with a long end that looked like a ponytail. It looked cool trailing behind him when he zipped past in his wheelchair, though it didn’t do that nearly as much now that he’d traded the chair for a walker. Combined with the eye patch he was wearing for this test, though, he looked like he was wearing a last-minute Halloween costume.

 

For roughly ten minutes, Genji kept his face inside the machine, clicking the button now and then, and changing the eye patch to his other eye halfway through. The doctor seemed pleased with the results.

 

“Well, your peripheral vision is excellent” he said, looking at the chart the machine had printed. “No no, don’t take the eye patch off, we’re not done yet. Here, pick one of these, whichever you like best.”

 

He handed Genji the small box Dr. Ziegler had dropped off earlier. Inside it were several masks, in plain white plastic, with visors in different shapes. He picked the one that looked the angriest. “What are these for?”

 

“Let me help you adjust it, the elastic is a bit loose - they’re prototypes for your combat mask. We have to make sure the visor shape isn’t getting in the way.”

 

Another ten minutes later, the test was over and the mask was approved. The doctor wrote down his pick in a small notebook and let him keep the prototype; 3D printed, he said, they didn’t need it anymore. Genji turned it in his hands, looking it over.

 

“Do you think they can make the visor green?”

  


\-----

That night, back in his room, Genji kept looking at the mask. It felt like something was missing. He stared at it for a while before opening his bedside drawer.

    


Under the few possessions he’d acquired in his time in Zürich - he’d actually started reading books, he was that bored - was the only thing he had left from his life before. The ribbon had burned away, but the metal plate from his headband was still intact, though a bit black from the soot. He grabbed that, the mask and the scarf, and holding on to the rails on his bed and the wall, made his way to the bathroom.

 

Standing in front of the mirror, he tied the scarf on his head again, then the mask, and held the plate in front of his forehead. He turned his head this way and that, considering. Better. Not quite there, but if it was higher, maybe some points here and here -

 

He took everything off and went back into his room. He was almost certain he had pen and paper somewhere.


	6. Chapter 6

The match broke in Genji’s hand, crushed against its box. Another followed suit, and then another, joining the steadily growing pile on the table. He broke the last one and threw both match and matchbox on the table, reaching for a second box.

 

A metal hand appeared in front of him, the index finger and the thumb pointing out. A small flame was coming from a lighter inside the tip of the finger. Genji glared. The cowboy hat and belt combo didn’t look any less ridiculous paired with the Blackwatch uniform.

 

“You’re welcome,” grinned McCree, pulling his cigar out of his mouth. “Looks like you’re having some difficulties there. You tryin’ to burn down headquarters?”

 

“I am not trying to burn anything.” McCree pulled the lighter back and sat down next to him, taking a drag from his cigar, eyebrows raised at the pile of matches. “I am almost well enough to go into combat training, but they will not let me use weapons until my fine motor skills are better.” He kept crushing matches against the new box, one after the other. “What does she know about motors anyway. She should let the engineers worry about that” he added under his breath.

 

“...so Dr. Herrera thought playing with fire was safer? And here I thought trusting me with scissors was already bad enough.”

 

“I am tired of the scissors. She said to do everyday tasks. This is an everyday task.” The match broke so violently that the loose end flew to the other end of the table.

 

“Who the hell uses matches everyday? Where did you even get this many?” McCree was playing with his lighter now, flicking the tip of his finger on and off. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a matchbox since I took up smoking ten years ago.”

 

“Well, _I_ do not smoke.” Genji struck the next match a bit more softly, and blinked. “I...do not think I could start even if I wanted to, now.” It was probably a good thing his drug of choice had been the occasional upper at parties; he’d used them rarely enough that he didn’t have to worry about kicking a habit on top of everything else going on right now. With how little real skin he had left, they’d probably have to stick the nicotine patch to his forehead.

 

“Did she get you to try the play-doh, too? She gave me some, but it kept getting stuck in my joints. Spent a week with my palm looking like I’d jerked off a muppet.”

 

“McCree, will you please leave me -- “

 

The match caught fire. Genji shut up mid-sentence, mouth hanging open. McCree let out a laugh. “Well, won’t you look at that!”

 

Genji sat up straighter, smiling. He held the match gingerly between his fingers, watching the wood burn.

 

….burning really close to his fingertips, actually.

 

He tried to flick his wrist to put it off, but the movement was awkward and stilted, and the flame crept closer to his hand. Alarmed, he let it drop - right on top of the pile of broken matches.

 

Which caught fire.

 

Genji and McCree looked at each other, and then at the tiny bonfire on the table. “I’m...I’m gonna go get some water” McCree stammered before fleeing. Genji leaned back in his chair, defeated, and hid his face in his hands.


End file.
